The drug, Ketamine, in moderate doses, is now being used legally to effectively help people out of anxiety, depression and the effects of trauma, PTSD. Best usage comes when the medicine is given alongside psychotherapy with a trained psychotherapist present. The MD needs to be in charge of dosage given to empower the psychotherapy and make the usage legal.
Ketamine was approved as a safe drug by the FDA 50 years ago. It was used at a high dosage for pain relief and general anesthesia and considered safe for children, adults, and elders. It’s been used by psychiatrists at a lower dosage as an adjunct to psychotherapy for almost twenty years now with increasingly more research being published about it.
Psychiatrist Stan Grof calls it “a nonspecific amplifier of the unconscious process.” Thus, it works to make emotions available that would otherwise lie deep in the unconscious and take months of psychotherapy to surface. Of course, integration of the ketamine session is also vital in order to make use of the insights gained. Best usage includes preparatory sessions and also post-integration sessions with a psychotherapist.
The only problem with ketamine is that when it is used outside of a medical or psychotherapeutic process, it can be abused. A user outside the proper set and setting can become addicted to the altered states of consciousness that ketamine provides.
A Psychiatrist Using Ketamine
Will Siu, MD, DPhil, (above photo) completed medical and graduate school at UCLA and Oxford University before training as a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. He was then on the faculty at Harvard for two years. He now does ketamine-facilitated psychotherapy in Los Angeles, CA. He writes:
“At low doses, ketamine produces a hypnotic or dreamlike state. During normal waking life, we have barriers and defense mechanisms that serve to push away unpleasant or intolerable memories, emotions, and phobias—feelings that we repress and store in our unconscious, where we can’t readily access them. Ketamine can break down those barriers and open up a filter to the unconscious. At higher doses, ketamine can be dissociative and produce deep, meaningful transpersonal experiences. The rate at which someone can reach a breakthrough and come to terms with negative emotions is far quicker. “
Dr Siu was recently interviewed for Goop, an online magazine. You can read more about his insights and his experiences with Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy by clicking HERE.
Isn’t it wonderful to know that there are safe, synthetic drugs that can be used to empower psychological healing! What a boon that the time needed for effective psychotherapy can be shortened, relieving the client far sooner than conventional forms of therapy that may never end in true healing.
Author Bio: Emma Bragdon, PhD is the founder and Exec. Director of Integrative Mental Health for You, IMHU.org.
If you liked this article you might like to learn more about the effective interventions for addiction using Ayahuasca and Ibogaine, plant medicines that can be used effectively for psychotherapy. These are reviewed in IMHU courses at greater length.